


good to go (somewhere golden)

by diydynamite (orphan_account)



Series: weightless (cow chop band au) [2]
Category: Cow Chop (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 00:35:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11886201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/diydynamite
Summary: Brett meets the band.





	good to go (somewhere golden)

**Author's Note:**

> because apparently i can't have hundarhd band au without 1k+ of exposition smh
> 
> title from 'saturday' by fall out boy!

Brett pulls up to the address James gives him and steps out to look at a completely ordinary house somewhere in the suburbs of Colorado. It's the back-end of summer, and the late afternoon sunlight bakes the cement under his feet as he walks up. The garage is open, and James comes out to meet him, the grin of someone who's called the same number eighty times plastered across his face. "Brett! Sorry about the calls."  
"It's fine." Brett very carefully doesn't mention that his phone barely survived when he flung it at the wall after the fiftieth call. "So where's the band?"  
James leads him to the garage, and sure enough, the kids from last night are in there. "That's Joe, he's our lead guitarist. Aleks, he plays bass, you met him yesterday. Trevor on drums. I sing and play rhythm."  
Joe crosses the garage to shake his hand, four feet of cheery smile and a couple inches of pure evil. Trevor waves, nervously smiling, and Aleks can't seem to meet his eyes, which Brett can understand. He says his hellos and then gets down to business.  
"This is your studio?"  
"Well, technically it's Trevor's garage, but that's just 'cos none of us have drums except him." Joe answers him, the others too busy putting their equipment in order. "We rent the studio in town for a couple of hours if we really need to, and we recorded our EP there, but we mostly practice here."  
Brett surveys the tiny space, clogged with wires and amps and a couple of distortion pedals hooked up here and there. They have some sort of decrepit soundboard perched on a rickety table that Trevor assures him is nearly working, and a dusty cow print couch in the centre of the garage, littered with stains and holes of various sizes.  
To add insult to injury, Trevor's mother beeps at them from her little red Toyota in the driveway as she pulls away, and Brett is seriously reconsidering this entire thing. He's not sure he can sign a teenager that still lives with his mom; Joel usually handles the business stuff.  
"Pretty sweet, right?" James' tone is wry when he comes over to stand with Brett, electric guitar already plugged in and wired up. "It doesn't look like much, but we make it work."  
And he's not entirely wrong. Sure, the acoustics in the garage are kind of shit, and their equipment is pretty terrible, but, sitting on a lawn chair in the driveway, watching each of them rip on their instruments, Brett thinks James' words have some truth to them. There's just something about their sound, something raw and genuine and hopeful, the same thing that caught his attention the other night. James sings into the microphone for all he's worth, untrained voice flowing roughly along the notes, dipping and trailing the way he's only ever seen real talent sing. On the couch, Joe's fingering his electric, pulling and weaving together strings of melody to compliment the power chords James strums out on his own guitar, one leg hiked up on the amp to get a better angle. To the left, Aleks perches on the bass amp, beanie pulled low over curly brown hair, and the black bass sings in his hands, a low, irresistible thrum that makes his skin itch. Brett pulls his eyes away, glancing behind to where Trevor sits behind the three of them, drumsticks moving fluidly like they're an extension of him; he doesn't smash the drums like Brett's seen a hundred untrained drummers do, going for volume over finesse. Trevor alternates his sound so smoothly Brett knows he's not doing it on purpose; there's no technique here, just intuition. They're raw, unpolished, fucking up here and there, but they just laugh it off and carry on, playing Blink-182 and Nirvana and Green Day in between a few original songs. Brett records a couple of their better performances on his phone, shaking his head at the way James flips off the camera.  
At first, some kids playing nearby in their front yards come over, drawn by the noise and commotion, but then passers-by, some jogging or walking their dogs, start to stop, peering at them from the sidewalk, and before Brett knows it, there's a crowd of over ten people, all standing around and watching. He asks James about it later, and learns that they have a tiny fanbase as a result of a county tour they'd done earlier in the year, consisting of a couple dozen people in their area, most of which are neighbours or acquaintances or patrons of the bars they play to.

They play for nearly an hour before seeming to collectively agree to stop, and the reason only becomes apparent when there's a honking from behind him and Trevor's mom pulls into the driveway.  
Brett shakes her hand and gives her an old business card, trying to look as professional as possible, but it's hard when she gives him the Eye, and then proceeds to yell at Trevor to "Stop playing that nonsense, you know your father's coming home soon and he doesn't like you banging your drums after six!"  
They clear out pretty quick after that, walking Brett to the nearby McDonalds, and the boys keep up an easy, irreverent atmosphere, absorbing him into the conversation without missing a beat. Brett learns that James and Joe are the same age, just turned 22 this year, and go way back together, having met in high school. They'd been a duo, originally, Joe's skill on the electric and James' pipes enough to entertain friends and win small-town singing competitions, but once they'd become seniors, the dream seemed to dissolve under the prodding words of guidance counsellors and disapproving parents.  
Instead of giving up, they expanded, starting a band with a bunch of other seniors after graduating. "Worst idea ever," Joe comments, scuffing his shoe on the sidewalk, and James barks out a laugh, shaking his head.  
"They were a bunch of fucking douchebags. But we met Aleks there; he was their swap-out bassist because their actual fucking bassist couldn't be bothered to show up."  
Aleks shrugs when Brett looks at him, smiling faintly. "It kinda sucked. Mainly cos' I was younger than them, so nothing I said mattered."  
"It's not like anything we said mattered either, the fucking guy ran it like a dictatorship. Long story short, we left and took Aleks with us." James pronounces with a strangely proud finality.  
"And Trevor?"  
Aleks grins. "He was a fan."  
"Fuck off, dude." Trevor complains, reaching out a foot to trip him. He goes down, stumbling into Brett, who has to grab his arms to stop them both from falling, and when he regains his balance his cheeks are flushed faintly.  
"It's true, though. He, like, commented on one of our shitty videos, cos' we only did acoustic at the time, and asked if we needed a drummer. We didn't know he was, like, twelve until he came over for auditions."  
"Fuck you, I was fifteen, and Aleks was, like, seventeen, that's not that much older." Aleks shoves Trevor, but they're saved from a major fight by the sudden appearance of the Golden Arches in the distance.

They all get ice cream from MacDonalds, the shitty kind that costs less than a dollar, and walk back to Trevor's house, light fading fast around them.  
Aleks speeds up to walk next to him, the others trailing behind, too caught up in their conversation to notice. "Hey, Brett?"  
"Yeah?"  
"Uh, I just wanted to say thanks for last night."  
"I'm surprised you remember last night."  
"I remember some of it." Aleks' face darkens, and Brett knows he's recalling the guy from the bar.  
"Hey, no worries. You're young, you make mistakes."  
Aleks snickers. "Like you're so much older than me."  
Brett doesn't get to reply; the others catch up with them and Aleks drifts back to talk to Trevor while James and Joe continue recounting the history of their band.  
"Anyway, we were just messing around for a while. Cow Chop only came around about a year ago, when this guy comes up to us after a gig at some shit pub downtown." James scowls. "Told us we had potential, got a shitty little recording studio for us and four shiny contracts to sign. He gets us an EP, doesn't bother producing it or packaging it, so of course we don't sell enough for even a county tour."  
"He made us all pay for the tour." Trevor murmurs from behind and James laughs, the angry kind of laugh that Brett is all too familiar with. "He made us pay out the ass for the fucking tour, took all the damn profits and ran off with this bitch he met at some bar along the way."  
Privately, Brett thanks his predecessor for setting the bar pretty low. "And what about the contracts?"  
"Funny thing. We showed up to his house a couple weeks later and he told us he was voiding them. Ripped them up in front of us and then told us he'd call the fucking cops if we didn't leave." James spits in the grass just off the sidewalk, and Brett accepts that this is just something he does.  
"Well, that kind of thing doesn't fly at Machinima, so you're all good on that front."

There's a pause after he says it, as if the entire band is holding their breath, and then Trevor bursts out, "Are you really going to sign us?"  
Brett kind of wants to laugh, because it reminds him of his own reaction when Machinima offered affiliation to his label, despite not having any huge names yet. But Joel hadn't laughed when he offered Brett the deal then, and now Brett doesn't laugh either, just smiles and claps Trevor on the back. "Yeah, dude. You'll be under Hundar Records, but we're directly affiliated to Machinima, so everything will be by the book. If you agree to sign, anyway."  
"So what do we get if we sign?" James asks, and Brett nods approvingly; at least they're asking the right questions now.  
"Well, I'll probably either fly you down to LA or rent an apartment here for a couple of weeks and get you set up on rerecording that EP. Then we'll see about a real tour and physical sales."  
There's a beat of stunned silence.  
Joe whistles next to him, a sharp sound that pierces the tension, and then Trevor's yelping as Aleks jumps onto his back, and James is hollering, and Joe's laughing, and Brett can't help but smile too. They must look a sight, four teenagers and a guy not much older than them walking down a suburb in Colorado, whooping and shouting and celebrating, but he couldn't care less.

He's only ever helped to produce other bands, but this feels different, somehow, it feels bigger, and even as he waves goodbye to the guys and gets into his rental car with a promise to be back in touch with them in a couple of weeks, he can already feel something shifting and changing, like he's on the verge of a swelling wave, with nowhere to go but up, up, up.

**Author's Note:**

> i apologise that you had to sit through that, promise the next one will have actual hundarhd 
> 
> hope you enjoyed anyway, comments greatly appreciated!


End file.
